I bought one in the summer of 2011, great desktop and did everything I asked of it. I do not regret buying it however if I had my time back I would have ordered the components and built myself a much better system for about $500 less than I spent on the alienware.

Also worth noting that the alienware is still running and running exceptionally well and I have never had any problems with it.

-in the $1300-$2000 range, Alienware are one of the least overpriced OEMs
-for $1500 you can build a better computer than an Alienware Aurora, but if won't run games any better
-Alienware is owned by Dell, meaning you get better support than just about any other OEM
-Alienware computers are neither poorly built or cheap junk, they are actually pretty high in terms of build quality

I find them overpriced for that particular spec (not excessively so - I know someone who's got a lifetime insurance from Alienware, which he paid an additional €1000 for, for example and isn't done anymore). The support is decent, but not the best, and there was a time shortly after Dell bought them out when Alienware were at best mediocre. But look at my build above and I don't really think you can argue that that's a better build in the price range of the Alienware, which I also linked in my post.

my thing was having the extended warranty on the whole thing as opposed to having individual 1 year part warranties...preference I guess.

One year parts warranty? What are you talking about. My CPU, motherboard,SSD, and GPU all have three year warranties. The RAM was a life time and the PSU was 7 years. Nothing I bought for my PC had a 1 year only warranty. Warranties from pre built OEM's are not as good as a self built system.

- Gaming? If so:
-- Which games?
-- At what resolution?
-- At what desired graphic settings?

- Will you be doing any streaming or recording while gaming? If so:
-- At what resolution?

Basically, give us an idea of what you want the computer to accomplish. This is all to get advice on what to buy, and I want to warn you ahead of time: It's not going to be an alienware machine. I know they look cool, I would buy a case from them if it was for sale (and reasonably priced), but basically... you're buying into a really, really, REALLY expensive Dell.

Well, I did recommend he look at the stick and come back with it filled out, which asks all those questions, and budget, but no response from OP since.